Nature dissipates my concerns as if they were a necessary ingredient in photosynthesis

          It is an accident of history that I exist in a time when the surface of the earth has become weary as a source for artistic subject matter.  But this does not mean it is at all reasonable to conclude that artists are weary of Nature as a source of inspiration.  A generalization such as that is as valid as concluding that anyone who does not own a camera detests pictures or anyone who does not ski despises snow.

          I am not weary of natural preserves I can walk through, exposing myself to vistas and lush terrains which invite me into their spaces - spaces which surround me completely in an earthly organic womb.

          Such spaces dissipate all my concerns, pulling them out of me as if they were a necessary ingredient in photosynthesis.  I walk through them in anticipation of an organic focal point provided by forms composed in the wild.

          The scale of these compositions has little bearing on my pleasure.  It could be lichen on a rock held in my hand or the undulating folds of a massive granite rock.  This diversity of visuals becomes my repertoire.  They are organic symphonies whose notation I absorb.  I carry their memory in my brush.

      
          Nature presents some of her grandest and vivid spectacles in the renewal of spring, surprising me with her energy.  Her endlessly diverse forms are a vehicle of color.  Her most striking colors emerge, beckoning me, pulling me into her spaces to study her compositions and her bold combination of colors.  She is not shy about this, she is not modest in her use of color.
          With her color serves as a lure, having a pro-creative purpose that seizes the eye.  I feel as simple as a large vulnerable insect drawn by the pollen of her abundant diversity.  These notions too become part of my visual journal.

          Nature gives me the latitude to infuse my colors with strength, giving them substance and vitality and the element of surprise.  In my paintings, color becomes the liaison between form and content.  Forms want to be a certain color, they want to display a certain vitality so their aliveness can be enhanced.  The vitality of color I use in paint compensates the static painted forms for having to be fixed on the canvas.  Having been robbed of life and freedom of movement, they are resuscitated by color and space.  So what I have taken away from them, I do my best to give back.    

          Part of what makes it possible to develop a new relationship with Nature is that I have been freed by man's advances from being obsessed by notions of utility.  I am free from having to provide for my own material needs.  This freedom encourages new thoughts about nature to develop.



"Giacometti's defection from Surrealism came with his return to nature, to the study of the model.... It was precisely the Surrealist notion of a reality exhausted by common knowledge which Giacometti had resolved to challenge.... Reality, he assured me, had by no means been commandeered by the camera..."I can be boring.  Reality never!"*
*Rosenberg, Harold.  Art on the Edge, pg. 126-7.  University of Chicago Press, 1975.